Booking and biking my way through 2020.
Books
6. The Murmur of Bees by Sofia Segovia (historical fiction)
Ears deep in a search for that book that I can’t put down, I thought this one could be the answer so I grabbed it for $1.99 when it was a Kindle daily deal. It’s got an average rating of 4.28 on Goodreads with over 15,000 ratings. That’s incredible, but it just didn’t do it for me. I see that it has all the making of a good book, I really do, but it just dragged on and on. It had a solid beginning and end. The writing was heart-felt, but there was lots of wandering. 2.5 STARS
6. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling (fantasy)
First, why is this 734 pages long? I genuinely liked the story, but, yeah, it felt long, and I’m not certain it needed to be that long. The idea of the Triwizard Wizard tournament was a fun twist from the first three stories. I also really liked that I could not figure out where this one was going the entire time. I like a book that keeps me guessing. 3.5 STARS
7. The Magical Language of Others by E.J. Koh (memoir)
I generally love a memoir, but this one was not deep enough for me. I won it at my library’s book bingo back when we were allowed to go to public things and read it this month because I thought it was a sure-fire answer to my search for that really good book since few memoirs have let me down. This one was interesting, at times, but I wish the author would have cracked herself open more. I think her experience is so unique, but the delivery was just flat. 2 STARS
8. The Infinite Pieces of Us by Rebekah Crane (young adult)
This cute, quick read (free from Prime Reading) was written by the same author as The Odds of Loving Grover Cleveland, which I read last month. I mostly saw a trend. Her thing appears to be writing about young adults who pave their way on their own. I don’t hate the concept, I just felt like this book mirrored much of the other I read of hers and was therefore overly predictable. It’s probably worth the read, but of the two I would recommend The Odds of Loving Grover Cleveland before this one. 3 STARS
Biking
And now, onward with the goal to ride 2020 miles in 2020 on a bike.
2020 miles in a year means approximately 5.5 miles/day. I’ve been trying to do at least 8 each time I sit down, with the goal of 202 (10%) per month in these lead-off months. So far it’s happening! My total?
612 miles.
So far, only 26 of those miles have been outside (18 of them pulling a kid).
I can’t say for certain, but I would imagine my pace will quickly begin to change. COVID-19 is actually making it harder to find time to ride (as we quarantine, I don’t have childcare during the day, so I spend my days with the kids and my nights working). And then as it gets nicer out, I have hopes of riding more outside, but my plan was to front-load my year, knowing my outdoor riding would take me longer on account of pulling kids behind me.
In an ideal world, I’m not quarantining and can spend my free time riding… whether I’m pulling kids outside or riding at night inside. Nothing is really ideal right now, though, is it?
Hope you had a great March! Stay healthy everyone!
